Fire versus water: reconstructive archaeology

The wind fell light yesterday afternoon and, heart in mouth, I decided to try firing the beach clay pots. The weather was still iffy but we could be waiting weeks for it to settle.

The essential part of firing clay is to heat the pots slowly, otherwise they will crack or even explode (and with my first experiment a few years back, I was actually ducking shrapnel). On the other hand, if they don’t get to about 600 C, the clay will not be fired at all. There are several ways of tackling this, but in a small garden with neighbours all about (and local regulations about when you can have bonfires), making a clamp is probably the most socially acceptable solution.

It is a very simple and fairly fuel-efficient method. It’s also a method that evolved very naturally and quickly under my hand when I was first fooling around with the idea with a few pinch-pots. So although it may not be the way that real Grooved Ware was fired in Neolithic times, it’s a not unreasonable hypothesis.

It looks a little sinister at this point

Pots to go in. I wonder how many of these will survive.

I never know whether to put them rim up or rim down. Yes, that is a toilet seat.

Next layer is hay and fine twigs for a cool flame (to warm the pots) and some charcoal, a by-product of the last clamp

Dry turves are laid over the firing area. A small bonfire is lit upwind and warm air channelled into the area with the pots.

The fire is led towards the pots as slowly as possible. Wet turves and earth are laid over the whole structure once it is alight to slow down the burning.

At midnight, it is raining steadily. It may put out the fire. Or if the fire is hot inside, the thermal shock of penetrating cold rain may explode the pots.

Controlling the fire is the difficult thing – and quite apart from the enormous usefulness of pottery itself when the technology began to be used, one can see how it was a necessary preliminary to any kind of metal smelting.